Foreign investors sold $19.1 billion of Canadian securities in March, the largest divestment since September 2022, according to Statistics Canada.
At the same time, Canadian investors sold $5.6 billion of foreign securities during the month of March, a fourth consecutive monthly divestment.
The result is that there was a net outflow of $13.5 billion from the Canadian economy in March of this year.
The sale of Canadian stocks and other investments in March followed five straight months of foreign investment inflows that totaled $53.5 billion.
For the first quarter of this year, foreign investors reduced their exposure to Canadian securities by $8 billion, marking the first quarterly divestment since the second quarter of 2019, which was before the Covid-19 pandemic struck.
In March, foreign investors reduced their exposure to Canadian debt securities by $14.7 billion, led by retirements of corporate paper.
Foreign investors also reduced their holdings of Canadian stocks by $4.4 billion in March, mostly by offloading bank shares.
For their part, Canadian investors lowered their holdings of foreign securities by $5.6 billion in March. The reduction was mainly due to the sale of U.S. stocks, said Statistics Canada.
